Is There a Right Way To Spend Time With God? (ATP)

This week’s question is, “Is there a “right” way to spend time with God?” Instantly, I’m drawn to John 4:23-24, “…the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” The right way to spend time with God is to worship Him in Spirit and in Truth, but what does that mean?

Look at Philippians 3:3, “For we are the circumcision, who worship God in the Spirit, rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh.” Christians have been circumcised meaning, cut to the heart and made pure, separated from the unclean multitudes and consecrated to God. Notice here there’s a contrast between worshiping in the spirit and having confidence in the flesh. We are told to rejoice in Christ! This means that our rejoicing, our joy, and our contentment, comes from Christ. This is the truth. The Word and all it promises is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Help us God! Our rejoicing isn’t in the flesh so we don’t need to experience the truth in manifestation in our flesh and in this natural realm to believe it. We must believe that there is a greater realm of the spirit where God ensures, “…that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.” (Romans 8:28)

How does this answer your question? Look next at Colossians 3:10, “…have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him.” Where do we put on the new man? That’s our spirit being. When we accept Jesus as our personal Lord and Savior, we are born anew in spirit, not in flesh. We must spend time with God by continually renewing our spirit being by the truth of the Word of God. Skip down to Colossians 3:16, and you’ll see that it is your job to, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.” If you look at the original language of the term “one another” you’ll see it actually means oneself. How do we spend time with God? We get into His Word in order for it to dwell in us richly. We let the word correct us, direct us, change us, and encourage us. This is where diligence comes into play.

Look at Hebrews 11:6 AMP, “…For whoever would come near to God must [necessarily] believe that God exists and that He is the rewarder of those who earnestly and diligently seek Him [out].” We see some very important truths here. First, if you want to come near to God and spend time with Him, of course you must believe He exists, but much more importantly than that, you must believe that He rewards those who diligently seek Him.

Have you ever been diligent with anything in your life? Maybe you were an athlete and you wanted to be the best you could be at that particular sport. What did you do? You practiced regularly, you showed up for the games on time and ready to compete, and I’d be willing to bet you even thought about your next move ahead of time, pondering how to be better and how to be victorious. This same sort of diligence should be shown for the things of God. We should be pondering our victory, we should be constantly going to Him, practicing the things He’s spoken in the Word, we should show up to the meet, on time and ready to compete so to speak. Set aside a time to spend with God daily. God is our coach through this life and if we’re willing to be diligent, He’s willing to help us walk in our victory.

Now let’s consider this a bit more. The first time you played that sport you didn’t know everything there was to know about it, but instead you probably had more questions than answers, perhaps more mishaps than victories. As we develop our personal relationship with God and His Word, we must be ok with not knowing everything right away. We may not have the Bible memorized, we may still cry a little when bad things happen to us, we may not hang the moon everyday with time in prayer, and we may even get a little snarky with our kids and spouse, especially during quarantine.We must keep coming back to God daily. We must keep showing up to our local church to hear what He’s delivering through our pastors. We must endeavor to know who He really is and diligently seek Him because we love Him. This is the right way to spend time with God. We talk to Him as a Father, we love Him as the same.